Report warned of child migrant crisis

HARLINGEN - Last summer, U.S. government officials commissioned a research project aimed at solving a problem that had vexed them for years and has since ballooned into a full-blown humanitarian crisis: how to deal with a sharp increase in unaccompanied children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into South Texas.

Department of Homeland Security officials tasked researchers from the University of Texas at El Paso with identifying the scope and depth of the problem posed by the growing numbers of unaccompanied children caught crossing illegally and alone in the Rio Grande Valley.

Their findings, first published in January, foretold the crisis to come. Word had spread in Central America about a "lack of consequences" for illegal entry, the researchers wrote, based on conversations with Border Patrol officials. Smugglers were exploiting the system, which by law requires the Border Patrol to transfer unaccompanied children to a shelter system run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours.

While adults often are detained and deported, about 90 percent of these unaccompanied youths caught at the border are now being placed with a relative or sponsor in the U.S. within about a month while they await the outcome of their immigration cases.

In the report, Border Patrol officials called for the creation of a "welcome center" in the Rio Grande Valley that could have - in hindsight - diminished a staggering processing bottleneck that left thousands of children confined in cramped and chilly holding cells for days. But the "welcome center" never materialized, and in its absence, the children languished in overcrowded Border Patrol processing stations for, in some cases, longer than the three-day limit as the government scrambled to find more appropriate facilities, sending thousands to military installations in Texas, California and Oklahoma and opening an Arizona Border Patrol warehouse.

The UTEP report identified systemic communication and coordination problems among the federal agencies responsible for the children's care - problems that eventually contributed to President Barack Obama tapping the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts in the Rio Grande Valley.

"I would not say DHS was unprepared. They knew it was a growing issue," said Victor Manjarrez, the associate director of the UTEP center that produced the report and a former Border Patrol official. "What was undercalculated was the rate of increase."

The Border Patrol has apprehended an unprecedented number of children and teenagers crossing the border alone so far this year. From October through May, they counted more than 47,000 apprehensions of unaccompanied children, an increase of 92 percent over the same period last year. That includes more than 33,000 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley.

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'Push' and 'pull' factors

DHS officials ramped up personnel in the Valley earlier this year, but with numbers that large, the solution to the influx will require something far more dramatic and substantive than a welcoming center, Manjarrez said, and likely will require addressing both the "push" factors sending youths north from Central America, poverty, gang violence and organized narcotics trafficking, and the "pull" factors in the U.S. drawing them here.

"At some point it's going to be a policy change of some form that not only the government can live with, but the people, will say, 'OK, yeah, we can live with that. That represents who we are as a nation,'" Manjarrez said, referring to the sensitivities involved when children are detained in austere holding facilities.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said the government is exploring options for faster repatriation of unaccompanied children, who by law have special protections that are not afforded to adult detainees. Johnson said that immigrants caught at the border shortly after crossing are "priorities for removal" - regardless of their age.

Government data shows relatively few unaccompanied children are generally targeted for deportation. A senior ICE official said the agency averages about 1,600 such removals each year, most of those involving children who reach the U.S. and voluntarily decide to return home.

Border Patrol agents reported more than 20,800 apprehensions of unaccompanied children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in 2013. ICE repatriated 496 unaccompanied juveniles from those three countries last fiscal year - down from 2,311 in 2008, according to ICE data analyzed by the Washington D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.

Protection concerns

Advocates worry the administration may be signaling a policy change that could weaken protections for unaccompanied children..

"The administration has a massive emergency on its hands and we are grateful for everything they have done, but we worry about turning these kids back into the hands of persecutors," Nancy Langer, the vice president for mission advancement for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which advocates on behalf of unaccompanied children. "We want and we expect that the administration's handling of this emergency is going to be animated by protection concerns. There is always a tension between that and just the sheer, massive weight of the surge. But we do want the administration to be mindful of that."

Some Republicans argue U.S. policy is fueling the influx of children, calling it "an administration-made" disaster. But the White House and human rights groups argue that children are being driven from their homes by a humanitarian crisis in Central America, which is increasingly beset by gang and cartel violence.

The government's response to the crisis is not just politically delicate, but also constrained by law.

Immigration officials cannot simply deport an unaccompanied child as they would an adult. Unaccompanied children from Mexico generally are quickly returned to the border. Those from countries other than Mexico are supposed to be transferred from Border Patrol custody to the Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours. Then the children are to be placed in a network of more than 90 state-licensed shelters and other facilities. The government then searches for relatives or other sponsors in the U.S. to care for them while they await the outcome of their immigration cases. Roughly 90 percent are released from custody within about a month.

But the sheer number of children has overwhelmed both DHS's and ORR's detention systems. Photos of children and families crammed into cramped Border Patrol stations leaked to the media, prompting an outcry for better protections and sending officials scrambling to find more appropriate shelter.

Beyond the short-term fix of finding appropriate bed space, the U.S. government will need to carefully examine its own policies and work closely with governments in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, said Doris Meissner, senior fellow and director of the Migration Policy Institute's U.S. Immigration Policy Program.

"It is pretty complex to think about how you reverse the dynamics in place now," said Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was dissolved with the creation of DHS.

A complicated fix

Meissner suggested a string of possible changes, including adding more immigration judges to help speed children's appearances in court.

But speeding court dates is a complicated fix that would require additional funding, and would necessitate careful consideration of children's access to attorneys, Meissner added. Children are not entitled to government-funded lawyers, and the advocacy organization KIND, Kids in Need of Defense, estimates that more than half go through the system without the benefit of an attorney.

At the same time, Meissner suggested, the U.S. needs to explore diplomatic solutions with countries in Central America. He said the key to diminishing the flow of children is creating a future for children in Central America where they can live without being recruited into gangs or in regions so destabilized that there is virtually "no government presence."